Once Upon A Farm Q1 2026 Earnings Report

Once Upon A Farm EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -$0.59
• Consensus EPS: -$0.21
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.38
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Once Upon A Farm Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $72.72 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: +43.70%

Once Upon A Farm Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2026
• Date: 5/7/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 7, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Once Upon A Farm (NYSE:OFRM) (NYSE: OFRM) is a U.S.-based producer of refrigerated organic foods for infants, toddlers and young children. The company’s product lineup emphasizes cold-pressed, organic purees, blends and smoothies formulated for early childhood nutrition. Its offerings are positioned around whole-food ingredients, limited processing and claims of no artificial preservatives or added sugars, with packaging designed for convenience and on-the-go feeding.

Once Upon A Farm distributes its products through a combination of retail and direct-to-consumer channels, serving customers primarily across the United States. The brand has focused on placement in grocery and natural food outlets as well as e-commerce, targeting parents seeking fresh, premium alternatives to shelf-stable baby foods and snacks.

The company is notable for having high-profile investor and co-founder Jennifer Garner, who has acted as a public-facing advocate for the brand’s mission to improve access to nutritious early-life foods. Once Upon A Farm was created with an emphasis on transparent sourcing and nutrition-forward product development aimed at establishing trust with caregivers and pediatric nutrition communities.

As a publicly traded company, Once Upon A Farm continues to expand its product portfolio and distribution footprint while positioning itself in the competitive children’s food category. Its strategic priorities include innovation in refrigerated baby and kids foods, brand building with caregivers, and scaling retail and digital channels to reach a broader consumer base.

Once Upon A Farm Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Q1 results and updated guidance: Net sales grew ~43.7% to $72.7M with gross margin up ~308 bps to 40.8% and adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $3.1M; management raised 2026 net sales guidance to $313–$323M while maintaining adjusted EBITDA guidance of $2–$4M.
• Positive Sentiment: Baby segment and cooler momentum: Baby net sales surged 112% to $38.6M, the company added ~18,000 baby distribution points, coolers were 11% more productive versus Q4 and management targets ~5,000 coolers by year-end and 8,000+ in 2027.
• Positive Sentiment: Early innovation traction: New refrigerated protein-forward and other SKUs have begun rolling out and, in stores where placed, have shown >20% increases in cooler productivity during initial trial periods.
• Negative Sentiment: Cost and reinvestment pressures: SG&A rose to $45.8M (driven by ~$10.9M IPO-related stock-based compensation and public-company costs), inventory is up 67.5% to $50.3M, and management expects Q2 margin headwinds from a national club program, fuel surcharges, tariffs, and a snack-heavy mix while reinvesting upside into growth initiatives.

Presentation

[Operator]

Greetings, welcome to Once Upon a Farm's first quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Reed Anderson with ICR. Please go ahead.

[Reed Anderson, Managing Director at ICR]

Thank you, and welcome to the Once Upon a Farm first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With us on the call today are John Foraker, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, and Larry Waldman, President and Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings press release that was issued earlier this afternoon and is available on the investor relations section of Once Upon a Farm's website at www.onceuponafarmorganics.com. This call is also being webcast, and a replay will be available shortly after the call concludes. Before we begin, please note certain comments made on this call include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

[Reed Anderson, Managing Director at ICR]

These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future events and are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press release and other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. We do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call, except as required by law. During the call, we will use some non-GAAP financial measures as we describe business performance. The SEC filings, as well as the earnings press release, provide reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.

[Reed Anderson, Managing Director at ICR]

Now I'll turn the call over to John to begin.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thanks, Reed. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We are very pleased with our strong first quarter results, which included 44% year-over-year growth in net sales and a more than 300 basis point improvement in gross margin. The momentum in the business accelerated over the course of the quarter with strengthening key operating metrics, including velocities, household penetration, repeat rates, and distribution. We're also seeing meaningful performance improvements for our cooler placements, which on average delivered an 11% increase in dollar per store per week in Q1 2026 compared to the prior quarter, demonstrating that our cooler retail model is driving higher productivity at retail as we scale. While our IPO in February generated significant brand awareness as expected, the performance we're seeing is being driven by underlying strength in consumer demand and strong retail execution.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Based on the strength we're seeing in velocity, repeat, and cooler productivity, we are increasing our net revenue guidance for 2026, as Larry will outline shortly. Our top line growth was driven by volume, up 21.5% year-over-year, reflecting a significant expansion in distribution along with higher velocities. Price mix benefited from a shift to dry baby products along with higher kid pouch pricing versus a year ago. Consumption trends remained strong across our core metrics. Consumption growth was up in the mid to low 30% range during the quarter in aggregate across all our channels, including MULO and other non-reporting retailers and e-com. Key consumption metrics are strengthening, and we expect this to accelerate as we progress through the rest of the year on broadening distribution. Brand awareness is growing and driving more trial into the brand.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

In addition, we improved core packaging across our kid pouch line, in particular on smoothies, on our larger pack sizes, and on our club items. These changes are registering strong velocity improvement with more expected. Household penetration again expanded meaningfully, reaching 5.8% at the end of March compared with 4.5% a year ago. Our buy rate continued to grow modestly, which is strong performance given rapid acceleration in overall households over the year. Our repeat rate among households with kids increased 380 basis points compared to a year ago. For households with kids and for new families, our repeat rates are approximately 50% and approximately 60% respectively. We are attracting the right households, and they are repeating as we build the brand from baby through kid pursuant to our strategy.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

We are one of the few brands that is gaining households in baby and toddler across both pouches and snacks, showing that consumers are finding us for more occasions as our brand block scales. Looking at first quarter net sales in more detail. The big story in the first quarter was our baby business, where net sales increased 112% year-over-year to $38.6 million. Both pouches and snacks more than doubled, snacks had the largest impact on overall sales for the quarter. Most of the baby growth was driven by strong velocities on higher distribution levels compared to last year and due to significant distribution gains at existing retailers, particularly on snacks. We added over 18,000 new points of distribution across baby in Q1.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

We have another reset at a mass customer in April, so our baby distribution will keep increasing and will be materially higher by the end of Q2 compared to the end of Q1. This expansion is also critically important to driving future momentum since we know that our dry baby snacks are an important entry point into the brand for new consumers. From a category perspective, our measured growth is driving outsized share gains. For the 12 weeks ended March 22nd, we were the fastest-growing brand in baby and toddler snacks by dollar share. Our dollar growth in the category increased 88% versus a year ago, and unit growth was up 81%. This performance moved us into the number two share spot overall in the category, according to SPINS US MULO. We are already the number one certified organic dry baby snacking brand.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Our assortments continue to deliver category-leading productivity with aggregate velocity metrics meaningfully above all competing brands. Turning to our kid business, our first quarter sales increased 5.4% year-over-year to $34.1 million. While reported kid growth was modest in Q1 due to timing factors, underlying consumption remains strong, and we expect clear acceleration in Q2, supported by key customer programs, distribution gains, and velocity acceleration in our core. Consumption outpaced shipments during the first quarter, and we expect that gap to normalize over the balance of the year. We spent heavier on trade in Q1 to capitalize on the IPO headline momentum and club rotation timing, which is always volatile, came in below expectations for the quarter. For the full year, our kid category will deliver mid-teens growth or better. Next, I wanna highlight our strong baby cooler performance and expansion plans.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

We are on track to our year-end target of approximately 5,000 coolers, and we remain confident in our expectation for cooler growth to 8,000 or more in 2027. While cooler count and distribution expansion are powerful and important, even more important is the fact that our coolers are becoming significantly more productive in terms of retail sales per cooler. We added a lot of coolers over the last year, and we are seeing that productivity improve as our cooler base matures. We expect this to continue as we scale the program. In Q1, our coolers on average were 11% more productive than they were in Q4 last year and 27% more productive than they were in the same quarter last year. We expect further productivity gains as we expand assortments.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

In March, we announced the launch of our new meat and bone broth, and legume blend pouches. These products are our first-ever refrigerated, organic, cold pressure protected, protein-forward pouches for babies. These started to show up in select retailers in April with a much broader rollout over the next couple quarters. The early productivity improvements from these new additions to our assortments are impressive. In retailers where these new SKUs have gone into our assortments, we are seeing over 20% increases in cooler productivity just after the new products are placed, and with repeat, these should go higher over time. Incremental cooler productivity is important to us because we drive higher retail dollars performance within existing locations, and this also increases the potential ROI on all the potential future coolers in our pipeline.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

In other innovation news, late in the quarter, we began shipping our new Smoothies with Protein & Probiotics into select dairy sets nationally, and we also launched Power Wheels, the aged-up version of Tractor Wheels that expands our kid bar sets nationally. It's too early at this point to comment on velocity performance, but we expect these items will perform well in trial and repeat. Retailer enthusiasm and support have certainly been strong and in line with our expectations. Our marketing execution in Q1 was both efficient and highly integrated as we activated a full funnel approach that deepened our brand credibility and extended our reach. Additionally, our IPO-related activities generated significant earned media momentum, resulting in more than 3,500 articles with overwhelmingly positive brand sentiment. Together, these efforts drove a meaningful increase in household penetration and supported consumption growth across our core portfolio.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

The value proposition in our brand and products continues to strengthen as we expand and broaden our distribution. Not only is demand robust, but our retail distribution footprint is very well diversified for this economic environment. We see strength in all our channels and key retail relationships nationally. We are seeing significant growth and accelerating velocities in the club channel, and we have a major national program on kid pouches running in May. The club channel has proven to be an important driver of brand awareness for us, helping to convert a light buyer to a medium buyer, which leads to a two-three times increase in buy rate for that consumer going forward. This channel exposes us to millions of incremental potential households for our brand, broadening our awareness and physical availability.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

In summary, our first quarter results were outstanding and demonstrated the power and momentum of our brand. Our team is executing at a very high level. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Larry to cover the financial details and our increased outlook.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone. I will now provide you with some additional details on the first quarter financial results, along with our updated outlook for 2026. Net sales in the first quarter increased 43.7% to $72.7 million, compared to $50.6 million in the prior year period, driven by strong volume growth, mix, and pricing. Volume was up 21.5% versus the prior year period, reflecting expanded distribution and the introduction of new products. Cooler slotting fees, which are treated as a period expense and a reduction in net sales, were $500,000 in Q1 of 2026, down $2.1 million from the prior year period. Gross margin for the first quarter was 40.8%, up 308 basis points versus the prior year period.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

The increase was driven by lower cooler and slotting expense, partially offset by unfavorable product mix as dry snack growth accelerates. Looking ahead, we expect mix pressure to persist throughout the year, and Q2 margin will face additional headwind from the national club program on kid pouches. Trade efficiency, selective pricing actions, and ongoing supply chain productivity efforts are expected to offset these, as well as the tariff and fuel-related impacts over the full year. SG&A expenses for the first quarter increased $17.5 million over the prior year period to $45.8 million, with $10.9 million of this increase attributable to stock-based compensation, new public company costs, and one-time performance payments related to our IPO. As a percent of net sales, first quarter SG&A was 63%, up 713 basis points versus prior year period.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

Labor and employee-related costs were higher as a % of net sales due to planned increases in headcount to support our growth. Logistics costs and selling expenses were both lower as a % of net sales, reflecting leverage as we continue to scale. Net loss for the first quarter improved to $15.8 million from a net loss of $19.5 million in the prior year period, primarily reflecting higher gross profit, partially offset by higher SG&A expenses. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the first quarter improved to $3.1 million from $7.5 million in the prior year period, primarily reflecting higher net sales and favorable margin flow-through. First quarter adjusted EBITDA benefited from the timing of approximately $2.5 million in certain marketing and cooler-related costs that shifted from Q1 to Q2. Looking at our balance sheet.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

As of March 31st, 2026, we had nearly $100 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt, reflecting the proceeds from our February 2026 IPO, a portion of which were used to repay all outstanding borrowings under our term loan facility. Inventory of $50.3 million was up 67.5% versus a year ago, reflecting growth in dry snacks, a planned build to support a second quarter club promotion, continued growth across the business, and the rollout of new innovation. We believe that the inventory position supports expected demand and key customer programs in the quarters ahead. Turning to our outlook. Based on the strong results in the first quarter and recent trends, we are raising our net sales outlook for 2026.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

We now expect net sales in the range of $313 million to $323 million, representing growth of 30%-34% versus 2025. This is up from our previous guidance of $302 million to $310 million. During 2026, we are reinvesting any upside in sales into top-line growth initiatives, people and infrastructure to support future growth. Accordingly, we are maintaining our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of $2 million-$4 million despite the stronger top-line outlook. We continue to expect to achieve mid-teens adjusted EBITDA margins over the medium term. As we scale, we are driving profitability through supply chain efficiency, productivity, operating leverage, and disciplined marketing investments. That includes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the call for questions.

[Operator]

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. To ensure we have enough time to get everyone in queue, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, then reenter the queue for any additional questions. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. First question comes from Leah Jordan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Leah Jordan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi, John. Hi, Larry. Nice job on a great quarter. You know, I just wanted to start off where you guys left off. Okay, the EBITDA guidance unchanged here, sales staying strong. You know, it sounds like you're talking about reinvesting to drive the top line. Just wanting to dig in, you know, what incremental on the cost side are you baking in the guidance now? Is this all just more kind of trade investments and promotions? You know, how much is that being driven by a potential concern around a softer macro? Then, you know, within the cost line item, I think, you know, what's really topical still is, you know, what's your visibility on the freight and raw materials and any inflation there?

[Leah Jordan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

How much of that have you baked in now on this unchanged EBITDA guide? Thank you.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

We're building in our modeling. We are building in the fuel surcharge impact for the full year. When we talked about it at the end of last quarter, we anticipated one quarter of fuel surcharge impact. We're now building in for the full year, we're building 100 basis points of fuel in for the full year, impacting both COGS and our freight and warehousing costs going forward. We built in, as part of our original model, we built in inflation. We built in, as part of that, we're coming in in line with what the inflation that we built in. We did build in tariffs. We built in 100 basis point of tariff cost for the full year.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

That was in the original model that we put in. One thing that we are also taking into account is really as we see our actual sales and how the mix is taking place as we're mixing heavier into snacks versus pouches, and our club business, we're building in any impact into margin associated with that change in mix. We are expecting higher top-line sales, as we said in our guidance.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

As we carry that down, and we still anticipate carrying that down into our EBITDA number, we're looking to reinvest that into marketing spend, being able to drive, and infrastructure spend to be able to drive, the rest of 2026 and really, prepare us for 2027 to make sure that we're ready to for 2027 as we go forward.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Leah, just to build on that, this is John. We really feel like it's a good time to be on offense with this brand. You know, our household penetration is still at a modest number of 5.8%. We see strong repeat. We see all these strong metrics for consumers connecting with the brand, which were outlined in the earlier comments. It's the perfect time for us to take advantage of the broader awareness to just build the size of the growth opportunity for this business in 2027 and 2028 and beyond. That said, we're gonna be disciplined. We're gonna hold to the guidance that we've given. Hopefully, we can do better than that through the year.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

In the, you know, in the midterm here, we feel very confident in the margin structure in this business, delivering mid-teens kind of adjusted EBITDA numbers, and feel very confident about that.

[Leah Jordan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Okay. That's really helpful, color. Thank you. Maybe on a related follow-up, you know, as you're stepping up investments, I understand being on the offense here, maybe what are you seeing in the competitive environment? We've had some new entrances come in, you know, over the past year. Any changes there? Maybe any changes on the promotional landscape as well?

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

There's been no significant changes in the competitive landscape. On the last call, I mentioned we're facing a new competitor at one specific customer. There's been no change there either. We're still twice as productive on a dollar sales per point, across like pack sizes there, continuing to perform really well. We're not seeing any change really in our categories in the promotional intensity either. We feel like we've got a really good handle on that and are driving really good strategic revenue management goals as we go through the year. There's really been no significant change there other than our business, you know, the core consumer connection with the brand has really continued to accelerate, and we saw that from the front of the quarter to the back of the quarter.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Even in the April data that we can see, we're continuing to see the same thing. We see positive momentum. We just wanna take advantage of it while remaining very disciplined.

[Leah Jordan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Okay. Great. That's very helpful. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Next question, Tom Palmer with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

[Tom Palmer, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Maybe just to start out, I did wanna ask on pricing actions and maybe your thoughts as you look forward in kind of this more inflationary environment, but also, right, one where maybe the consumer, there's some uncertainty. Price mix up over 20% in the quarter. It sounded in the prepared remarks like that was driven by price increases, maybe not as much mix. Maybe just update on what you saw in the quarter with that and kinda how you think about pricing as we look forward. Thanks.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

First, on the first quarter and the price mix, we took a price increase in our pouches in 2025. That price increase was effective end of Q2 and really became effective in Q3-Q4 of 2025. What we're doing is we're comping against where we have a price increase built into 2026, where we're comping against a quarter that does not have the price into it. That's why the, you know, the price volume increase was price mix was showing higher in Q1. We're, we are looking at, you know, we believe that if the economy kind of in price pressure keeps going up, we have the capability of taking pricing down the road. Our brand is fairly inelastic.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

We don't anticipate a price increase having any impact on our velocity or growth of the business. We are keeping that in mind. We're looking at opportunities on very strategic price increases potential for the future if we wanna be able to take them. We have nothing, we're not looking to do a price increase in the immediate future, but we may look at that opportunity down the road.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yeah. As Larry alluded to, we've been conservative in the way we forecast the business going forward. We have good visibility to the fuel impacts, to the tariff impacts. We've you know, we bought forward most of our commodities, so we've got really good visibility. We'll be thoughtful and careful if we do need to take pricing. You know, our brand is pretty inelastic but we will also be very cognizant of just making sure that we keep the brand in a really good price-value relationship for consumers. Right now, despite all the consumer uncertainty that's out there, the brand is in a really, really strong price-value perception map with consumers, and we wanna make sure it stays there and continue to drive that forward.

[Tom Palmer, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Okay. Thank you for that. Follow-up just on maybe some of the promotional timing that you referenced. We did see the slower kid pouch growth. Is that where the promotional timing really was most in effect? Kinda how do you see promotional cadences as we look out over the course of this year?

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yeah, we're not changing anything significant in our promotional cadence. We leaned in a little bit more aggressively in the first quarter to do things like get display and just get extra placement and visibility for the brand at retail, tags up in places where we knew that there were gonna be millions of consumers that were gonna be hearing about the brand for the first time, and we wanted to make sure that we were very visible in store, and we accomplished that. You know, it's not always just price. It can be signage in store. It can be a whole bunch of different tools that you use, and we've done those. We don't expect on our core pouch business any change really at all in the overall cadence of promotion in that business, or in the depth or frequency at all.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

That business is in a really healthy place, and the trends are really continuing to grow as we've improved packaging, we've improved placement, we've moved more of our products from singles to multi-packs and positioned in a better AUP position against consumers across all channels. The trends are good there. We just need to continue them, and we see that in the data every month now, and we just wanna keep that trend going.

[Tom Palmer, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Understood. Thank you.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Jon Andersen with William Blair, please proceed.

[Jon Andersen, Partner of Equity Research at William Blair]

Hi, thanks for the questions. I'll just ask a two-parter, squeeze them in both here. My question is kind of around the innovation. You launched or announced, you know, a lot of, lot of innovation, and you mentioned, John, the kinda meat-based, meat and bone broth and legume pouches. And what I'm interested in is number one, you know, where those are going in and, and how far along you are in that process, of getting those into the coolers. Does that product all go into the baby aisle cooler? Is some of that, you know, going into the dairy sets?

[Jon Andersen, Partner of Equity Research at William Blair]

Kind of the follow-up to that, where you do have that, you know, in market today, what is that doing to the productivity of those coolers? How incremental is that to the existing pouch business? Thanks.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

You bet. Sure. We ended the quarter with about 3,700 coolers in market. Larry mentioned in his commentary or I mentioned in my commentary, I'm sorry, that we would be about 5,000 coolers by the end of the year. These meat, bone broth and legume pouches are all focused on going into those coolers. We started getting placements in some significant numbers of coolers in the April timeframe. It'll take a quarter or two with resets and just the shelf work required to get them into all those coolers. Our goal would be to have those items in all of those coolers by the end of, you know, a couple quarters from now. The interesting thing is we have basically daily or weekly insight into the velocity that's coming out of these coolers.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Literally the moment these products have hit the coolers, the coolers have become at least 20% more productive just on those items coming in, and in some cases, significantly more. That, of course, is all in the timeframe we're talking about, Jon, is all trial, right? I mean, we have, you know, they get in there and you got a one week. That's all trial. We don't know what repeat is yet. However, these products tested extremely well, and we have a pretty, you know, strong, well-proven, you know, methodology for testing products and anticipating how the repeat's gonna be. We expect repeat to be really strong and for these coolers to be extremely incremental to our assortment.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

We do have in the, in those coolers that I mentioned where we've got the velocity information, and the productivity information, we know that it's extraordinarily incremental to our assortment. As you would expect, right? These are meat, bone broth, protein position pouches going into the assortment that we had there that did not have that in the assortment before. It makes sense that it would be very incremental as well.

[Jon Andersen, Partner of Equity Research at William Blair]

How does the space work? You have X number of new items that are going into these coolers. Is it replacing existing items? Is it fully incremental to what's in there today?

[Jon Andersen, Partner of Equity Research at William Blair]

Trying to understand that piece of it too. You have X amount of space in the cooler.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Right.

[Jon Andersen, Partner of Equity Research at William Blair]

Filling it out in the most productive way, right?

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yeah. If you looked at our coolers over the prior year and as we have been talking to investors and just talking about what the business is doing, we had a lot of assortment that we were double, triple, and quadruple facing in the prior cooler format because we had more space than we had productive assortment for. So in this resets that we're doing right now, we're in some cases really just narrowing down the assortment, the number of facings on certain items, which is basically gonna have zero impact on the amount of that we'll sell, and just replacing those facings with much stronger assortment. In some coolers, the coolers are performing so well that the retailer and we are working together to add another shelf in the cooler.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

That's another thing that's happening as well, and we'll of course, try to do that everywhere we possibly can because that's a big win for both us and the retailer. It's all of those things happening. I think right now, when you look at the coolers after they're fully reset coming out of the introduction of the items we just talked about, we will really, for the first time, have like, I would call like an A-level productivity assortment across the entire cooler that is fit for purpose for where consumers want us to be with respect to covering off all their nutritional needs. We'll continue to improve that, of course, over time with new innovation, price stack architecture, new formats, things like that.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

We really do now have the ability to see how high up is in these coolers, and the early numbers look really, really encouraging there. I can't wait to report on those over the next couple of quarters as we go forward.

[Jon Andersen, Partner of Equity Research at William Blair]

Great. Congratulations. Thanks.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thank you, Jon.

[Operator]

Next question, Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Please go ahead.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Hey, Andrew.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays]

Great. Thanks so much.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays]

Hi there, John and Larry. I guess first off, obviously fiscal first quarter sales growth almost 44%, well above consensus for the quarter. You basically flowed through, I think, a little more than that upside at the midpoint to the full-year guide. That said, I guess the implied growth rate right at the midpoint for the balance of the year is now about 29%, which is a step down from the first quarter. I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, how much of that is simply conservatism versus the fact that, you know, the 1Q comp was also a bit softer versus something maybe more discrete you're seeing in the rest of the year that would kind of result in the deceleration.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

No, we want, you know, our approach, Andrew, is to set our guidance conservatively. Our consumption, as was mentioned in the prepared comments, is running in the mid to low 30s%, and toward the end of the first quarter and into April, it's been higher than that. We, we just wanna make sure that we're setting ourselves up to continue to increase expectations as we go through the year. There's absolutely nothing in our business that shows any kind of deceleration right now. In fact, it's the exact opposite. We also wanna make sure we're planning conservatively, guiding conservatively, and making sure that we can deliver against the commitments we're making to our shareholders.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays]

Yep. No, thanks for that. Then just one quick one. I should know this, but as a reminder, who is doing the sort of the baby cooler sort of shelf sets, like, you know, restocking the coolers? Is it the in-store merchandisers? Is it the retailers in some cases? I just forget how that works because I know keeping a-

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

The-

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays]

A fully stocked cooler, right, is really key.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Right.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays]

As velocities go up.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yep.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays]

You know, that requires more effort. Thanks so much.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Sure. Yeah. The basic answer, which is pretty universally true, is it's store-level personnel that are moving product out of the back rooms into the coolers. We are in certain places supplementing that with extra merchandising support just to make sure it's happening, auditing it, doing all those things like you do in any fast-moving category. There's a learning curve with retailers when they put these coolers in. You know, obviously, when you're putting a cooler in an aisle where there's never been any refrigerated items, it requires a little bit of education. Overall, we've been very pleased with how retailers have adapted and our, like, in-store service levels and in-stock rates on these coolers has been very good. That doesn't mean there's not room for improvement.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

There certainly is from time to time, especially after, like a busy weekend when the cooler is heavily shopped. That's how it works, and we're just continuing to optimize that and learn as we grow.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays]

Great. Thanks so much.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thank you, Andrew.

[Operator]

Next question, Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer & Company. Please go ahead.

[Rupesh Parikh, Analyst at Oppenheimer & Company]

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Just going back to the positive club channel commentary, if you could just remind us of, you know, how you approach the club channel, like the permanent items you have and then the rotating items that you typically have in the club channel.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

We typically have permanent items in a number but not all of the regions of the big clubs. We also participate in rotational programs, which is very common. This program that we're running in May is our first national program at the scale that you'll see out there in store. I'd say if you look at our business over the last three years and just kind of trendline it, the trendline has been that velocities have continued to increase consistently as consumers have become aware of the brand and tried it and have seen the value slope to club. More and more of our business is becoming every day, although I would expect that it'll always have a strong rotational component to it because that keeps the assortment fresh.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

We are seeing more and more everyday placements. That's a trend that's definitely happening. Just same store, the beauty of it is, Rupesh, you can see same store year-over-year productivity gains, which are all about velocity, because, you know, it's really not really a pricing story in that channel over the last two years. It's really all about unit velocity.

[Rupesh Parikh, Analyst at Oppenheimer & Company]

Great. Then just a housekeeping question. stock-based comp, I know is elevated in Q1, if there's any clarity or additional color you can provide there for the balance of the year. Thank you.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yeah. I mean, in Q1, it was really all tied to the IPO, and transactions and equity issuance through the IPO. We're not expecting that to continue through the rest of the year. This was a one-time IPO related stock-based comp adjustment.

[Rupesh Parikh, Analyst at Oppenheimer & Company]

Great. Thank you.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thanks, Rupesh.

[Operator]

Next question, Yasmine Deswandhy with Bank of America. Please proceed.

[Yasmine Deswandhy, Analyst at Bank of America]

Hey, guys. Thank you for the question. I just wanted to ask a little bit about revenue phasing for the year. You know, there's back to school in the third quarter. You have some promotion happening in the second quarter. I guess, how should we be thinking about, you know, which quarter should be the high watermark, either on, like, a growth or an absolute basis on revenues?

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

First, in Q2, we have the club promotion that we're going through that John was talking about. That's going to significantly increase revenues in Q2 over historical percentages and phasing for the year. Then in Q3, we have back to school, and we have other rotations that are running through club. Q4 is should be very similar to the cadence that we built into the earlier models that we've had. Q2 being increased over historical because of the club promotion. Q3 is usually our peak quarter because of back to school and other promotions we have in that quarter. Then Q4 comes in and usually is flat on a net sales basis, coming into Q4.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

That's what we're looking for for this year and it's very similar to what we've done in the past.

[Yasmine Deswandhy, Analyst at Bank of America]

Okay, great. Thank you. Just the same question, but on margins, is there anything that we should keep in mind quarterly?

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yeah, Q2, because of the promotion that we're having with the in club, that is a lower margin, significantly high volume of promotion. It will be putting pressure on margins in Q2 where And the way it's coming in is we're overdriving what we've built into our earlier model. That in line with also the $1 million in cooler slotting spend that moved from Q1-Q2, we're anticipating a 200 basis point impact on margins in Q2 versus what we went out in our earlier model.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

For the whole year, though, we're anticipating to be in line with our 120 basis point reduction from prior year, really just showing the impact of the promotions that we're running, a little bit of unfavorable mix associated with the growth of snacks and then the impacts of both the tariffs and the fuel into margin.

[Yasmine Deswandhy, Analyst at Bank of America]

Great. Thank you.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Next question, Robert Moskow with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Hey, Rob.

[Robert Moskow, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Hey. Just two questions. Hi. I wanted to ask, there's a sales beat, but there's also higher costs for freight and for fuel. After the extra cost, is there money left over for reinvestment? Like, that seems like a pretty big number for fuel inflation. I just wanna see exactly how much extra is being put back into the business.

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yeah, Rob, there is extra. The way we're modeling it, there is extra to be able to be put back into the business, specifically into marketing for the year. We're looking at $3 million-$4 million with the potential of going up from, you know, potentially move from adjusted EBITDA back into investment into the company for driving and, you know, really end of the year 2026 and really setting us up for 2027 full year.

[Robert Moskow, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

That's great. Okay. The second question was, you mentioned yourself that you got a lot of attention from the IPO. You know, is one of the reasons for conservatism that it might have spiked a lot of trial or one-time use, and it's unclear whether the repeat will be there in 2Q and 3Q. I'm sure you're very confident that it will be-

[Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm]

Yeah

[Robert Moskow, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Of gauging, you know, how much extra sales you got from all that attention?

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Well, you know, we know there was obviously a lot of engagement with the brand during the IPO from an earned media standpoint. We could see it online, we could see it in press hits-

[Robert Moskow, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Yeah.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

All that stuff. There's no question about that. We get repeat rate information from our panels on a monthly basis. Through the whole quarter, we saw increases in our repeat rates and engagement and, you know, I would just say if you, if you just kind of look at the way the products are turning out there, it feels really solid to us. We also wanna make sure that we're just setting the bar at a place where we can plan around it for contingencies, things like that could happen in the economy that we have not seen yet and we're not expecting, but we also wanna make sure that we're careful in the way that we plan. Our objective and goal would be to continue to increase our outlook as we go through the year. That's, that's been our philosophy.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

You know, we wanna build and earn some credibility around calling our numbers, and that's why we've taken this approach with our forward guidance. Even though you could argue from a consumption standpoint, we could have taken those numbers higher, I'd much rather take them up later based on actual execution versus, you know, just, you know, extrapolation.

[Robert Moskow, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

For sure. All right. Very good. Thank you.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Thank you, Rob.

[Operator]

I would like to turn the floor over to John for closing remarks.

[John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm]

Okay. Thank you very much, everyone. In closing, we're really proud of our strong start to the year. More importantly, we're seeing clear evidence that our model is working and strengthening as we scale. The combination of accelerating velocities, increasing household penetration and repeat, and improving retail productivity give us a lot of confidence in the durability and quality of our growth. We are building a differentiated brand and business with a long runway for category expansion, increased efficiency, and long-term value creation. As I often say, we're still in the very early innings of this opportunity, and look forward to the road ahead. I wanna thank our team, our retail partners, and our shareholders for their continued support as we execute against this significant opportunity. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate you dialing in today.

[Operator]

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Participants

Analysts

• Andrew Lazar, Managing Director at Barclays
• John Foraker, Co-Founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm
• Jon Andersen, Partner of Equity Research at William Blair
• Larry Waldman, President and CFO at Once Upon a Farm
• Leah Jordan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Reed Anderson, Managing Director at ICR
• Robert Moskow, Managing Director at TD Cowen
• Rupesh Parikh, Analyst at Oppenheimer & Company
• Tom Palmer, Analyst at JPMorgan
• Yasmine Deswandhy, Analyst at Bank of America